By Gary Scalise
The business of supporting members across a diverse range of financial products is becoming increasingly complex as credit unions offer more services that require support by their front-line teams.
And while the availability and usage of self-serve channels is rising, there will always be a need for members to speak to a knowledgeable resource in a call center.
Building and running a member services call center demands excellence in multiple disciplines including technology, recruiting, hiring, and workforce forecasting and managing. The value of scale as a cost-saver when it comes to call center necessities like facilities, talent, security, technology and training is well documented. However, there are other “hidden” elements that contribute to the overall cost and efficiency of a call center resource.
As an example, consider a call center that helps members resolve questions and issues related to their credit union debit, credit, bill pay, digital wallet, and online and mobile banking solutions:
* Home Banking and Non-Standard Applications. Home banking and other non-standard applications often involve extra expense because member calls frequently must be routed to a team of specially trained agents. These agents then use systems that require a flat monthly fee, which can vary based on the system and its required level of support. As part of enterprise risk management, systems not developed in-house should undergo a security and technical risk review, which means the credit union must administer or contract for auditing and compliance services.
On the telephony side, Dialed Number Identification Service might be needed so that incoming calls can be routed to the agents who are trained on the home banking platform.
Home banking system conversions also require several teams of people, including an implementation manager, script writers, and, for some projects, trainers. Extra agents may be required to manage the call volume on the actual conversion date.
- Core System Conversions. Core conversions and shared branching-to-direct conversions require extensive testing and updating of scripts. These activities add an additional layer of effort and expense.
- Premium Scripting. Credit unions may have many hundreds of scripts, some of which are rarely used. There is an added expense to create and maintain those scripts. Further, a large number of scripts increases the risk of errors by making it difficult for agents to find the correct ones; it also takes longer to locate them, which increases call length and can lead to excessive member wait times.
- Quality Monitoring. Call quality monitoring, which should be a standard best practice to validate proper service execution, staff performance and ensure member satisfaction, comes with an additional price of QA experts and tools.
- Training. While credit unions can administer training on their own standard systems and procedures relatively easily, training on third-party systems may add another layer to the overall cost of supporting a call center.
These five service areas each involve expenses and fees that may go overlooked or understated when credit unions seek to build and maintain their own call centers. Depending on where call center service ranks in a credit union’s menu of core competencies, it may be more efficient to leverage the scale and depth of a credit union service organization’s call center – that your credit union effectively owns a piece of – that shares the same vision and commitment to member experience.
Gary Scalise leads PSCU’s initiatives to deliver an unsurpassed service experience for the members of PSCU’s 850+ Owner credit unions. Gary is responsible for directing the people, processes and technologies that PSCU employs to resolve the 18 million inquiries that the company’s call centers receive annually related to inquiries on members’ accounts that span a broad range of products and services including credit, debit, bill pay and other types of accounts.